FlightFX has recently released their rendition of DuPage Airport (KDPA) for Microsoft Flight Simulator, a general aviation airport serving the city of West Chicago, Illinois, with a yearly average of 135,000 aircraft movements.

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It was built on former sheep-grazing land in the late 1920s by two Chicago entrepreneurs, and the U.S. Army eventually requisitioned it during World War 2 for training purposes. They built hangars and paved two runways, activating it in 1943. The hangar and the runways still exist, although one of the runways is now a taxiway.

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Howard Aircraft Corporation opened a factory across the road a year later, in 1944. They built more than 500 aircraft for the military, which was then pushed across the street for testing at the airport. 

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The airport was sold back to the county for $1 after the war, followed by a post-war boom that led to a new control tower, a new runway, and expansion plans that only came to fruition almost four decades later.

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Midway’s example (being unable to grow because of urban development around it) made the administration hurry to purchase more surrounding land and make it bigger, taking it from 360 hectares to 1,100 hectares by 1992, warranting control over all the property surrounding the runway complex and providing a larger buffer zone. 

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It has an FBO offering fuel, parking, de-icing, catering, lavatory services, and a little passenger terminal. 

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95% of the yearly traffic corresponds to general aviation, 4% to air taxi, and less than 1% to military traffic. There are 255 aircraft based at the airport.

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They recently opened a U.S. Customs and Border Protection (C.B.P.) facility on the first floor of the DuPage Flight Center FBO.

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The scenery features an accurate rendition of the airport, built in coordination with the DuPage Airport Authority, with on-site photography of all major facilities used for reference, custom ground textures, high-resolution photographic textures, custom night lighting, interior modeling of key structures, in-hangar parking spaces, static G.A. and corporate aircraft, reworked landscaping, and ambient lighting improvements.

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It’s available on Contrail for roughly $14.75, requiring at least 2.92 GB of free hard disk space to install.

Stay tuned to Threshold for more flight simulation news!

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